AgileIQ Blog

Scrum Practitioners Workshop: A Success Story

  

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by Ambika Patil

SolutionsIQ’s Scrum Practitioners Workshop in Hyderabad on 29 August got the attention of Scrum enthusiasts and was a great success! Many people attended and were eager to discuss their experiences.

Held at the Aditya Sarovar Premiere Hotel, the day began with a keynote via Skype from Joe Justice. In addition to his consulting role at SolutionsIQ, Joe is the founder of green automotive company WIKISPEED, which has revolutionized the auto manufacturing industry by using Agile principles to design and build a high-performance modular car in just three months. He described how he successfully manages critical WIKISPEED project objectives with collaborative distributed teams that iteratively contribute their work every two weeks from locations around the world. The audience was very interested in his implementation of Agile practices in a non-software environment.

Next up were speakers across many domains who brought the desi touch to their topics as they explored the many facets of implementing Scrum in India:

• Product Owner as Scrumdog Millionaire, a session conducted by Naveen Nanjundappa, was about the tasks involved with striking a balance in team and stakeholder interaction.
• Jayaprakash Puttaswamy gave practical insights about the various stages that a person goes through in becoming an effective ScrumMaster in his session, Raju Ban Gaya, ScrumMaster.
• The workshop's theme, “Explore and uncover the issues and challenges faced while implementing Scrum and Lean practices in the Indian context”, was addressed by having guest speakers Kanchan Khera, Bhuvan Lodha, and Nanda Lankalapalli speak about what they’ve experienced in their long Agile careers and the importance of retrospectives.
• Scrum Horoscope, a fun-filled session conducted by Naveen after lunch, saw bright hues of prediction in reading a Scrum team horoscope that warned of impending team disasters.
• The last of the morning’s sessions was a panel discussion conducted by Rafael Sabbagh. The group answered the various questions that were posted on a board throughout the morning by conference participants.

The day became even more interesting when the Scrum Dojo (open space) event began after lunch. The audience was asked to come up with topics of their own and discuss them within groups. Six speakers volunteered to present about the topics that were chosen, and the audience was at liberty to attend the sessions they were interested in. The open space gatherings proved very helpful in understanding the needs of the growing Agile community in India.

Our Scrum Practitioners Workshop was designed to encourage every Agile enthusiast to connect with others who share their passion. We’re pleased we were able to provide a platform for practitioners at every level — from beginner to expert — to partake in the insights that this August gathering offered!

To see more pictures from this eventful day, please visit the Flickr page we created for the conference. You can also learn more about the conference sessions and download presentations at our Posterous page.